
Not Quite by the Book
A Novel
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Narrated by:
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Mia Hutchinson-Shaw
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By:
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Julie Hatcher
About this listen
A bookstore owner discovers that life as a recluse isn’t for everyone in this sharp yet sweet novel about how sometimes you need to abandon the quest for love to find your true passion.
Emma Rini is in a rut so deep she could shelve books there. While her sister awaits her first baby, and her parents kick off retirement with vow renewals and travel, Emma stays put among the stacks of the family bookshop.
In fact, she can’t remember the last time she took a vacation. Or had a romance that hovered above disappointing. When her parents assume she’ll take over the shop for them without a break, she realizes she needs to get away—back to the nineteenth century. Channeling her favorite poet recluse, Emily Dickinson, Emma rents a crumbling manor house outside Amherst where she can learn how to be quietly, blissfully alone.
But becoming a world-weary spinster isn’t easy. She can’t start a fire or reason with the bunnies that are destroying the garden. She finds herself sparring constantly with the grumpy-hot architect who is renovating the manor. And then there’s the secret admirer who keeps sending her complicated floral messages…
No matter what she does, the outside world keeps knocking, and Emma starts to dream about the future. Will she forgo love for the family legacy? And will she shrink away or become the sort of bold person fortune favors?
©2025 by Julie Anne Hatcher. (P)2024 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.Listeners also enjoyed...
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“The latest from Hatcher is a sweet novel about taking chances and believing in yourself…A lovely read.”—Booklist
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Alternate Endings
- By: Ali Rosen
- Narrated by: Maria Marquis
- Length: 9 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Beatrice Leal’s personal life is complicated between her divorce and her precocious six-year-old. But the job she loves is the one thing she counts on to be straightforward—that is, until her boss’s own divorce prompts a move from NYC back to Ireland. Now Bea’s in Ireland twice a month for work. It’s wreaking havoc on the custody agreement she and her moody ex are sorting out while he lives downstairs in the brownstone they co-own. And to top it off, her company’s new CTO turns out to be the boy who once broke her heart: Jack Sander.
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I loved it
- By Kindle Customer on 03-19-25
By: Ali Rosen
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Happy After All
- A Novel
- By: Maisey Yates
- Narrated by: Stephanie Rose
- Length: 9 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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A city girl leaves her life behind in LA to start over in a small town… It’s a cliché, but it’s also Amelia Taylor’s life. And her new life as a romance novelist and motelier is going great—until Nathan Hart checks in. Of course he’s disastrously handsome, thoroughly disagreeable, and seems to be set against Amelia on sight. Of course there’s smoldering tension between them that can’t be ignored. They’d make the perfect enemies to lovers story. It’s one of Amelia’s favorite tropes.
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Grief Magnets ❤️🩹
- By Fran R on 04-24-25
By: Maisey Yates
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Nobody's Perfect
- By: Sally Kilpatrick
- Narrated by: Coleen Marlo
- Length: 9 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Vivian Quackenbush enjoys a typical life. She has winesday evenings with her two best friends. Her son is in college. She and her husband, Mitch, are planning the next move for their empty-nester future. But to Vivian’s blindsided surprise…not together. After nearly twenty-five years of marriage, Mitch wants a divorce. He confesses that he doesn’t love her anymore. He never even liked her chicken salad! Brutal. What is Vivian to do but channel her anger, frustration, and pain into a video she posts online.
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Womanhood and friends
- By D. Romano on 02-22-25
By: Sally Kilpatrick
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Gravewater Lake
- A Thriller
- By: A.M. Strong, Sonya Sargent
- Narrated by: Amanda Dolan
- Length: 12 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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She wakes on the shore of a remote lake in the middle of the night, freezing and afraid. With no memory of who she is or how she got there, she stumbles frantically toward the lights of a house. The handsome stranger who lives there is shocked to see a woman on his doorstep and takes her in. Trapped by a winter storm and cut off from the outside world, she starts to suspect that all is not right with the house on Gravewater Lake—or the man, who says his name is Gregg.
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Hoped for an ending to redeem the book. Don’t hold Your breath.
- By Barrett Calhoon on 04-09-25
By: A.M. Strong, and others
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While the Coin Is in the Air
- By: Kate Laack
- Narrated by: Dusty Nolan
- Length: 6 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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When the answers to the most difficult questions are the ones that lead us to our truest selves, would you trust the outcome to a coin toss? Twelve years ago, Harper Andrews put her law school dreams on hold during her mother's cancer treatment, changing the entire trajectory of her personal and professional life. Now a successful paralegal at a large Chicago firm, Harper's days at the office are spent supporting the very lawyers she once hoped to become.
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Infertility handled in an honest way
- By Mary on 03-12-25
By: Kate Laack
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There's Something About Mira
- A Novel
- By: Sonali Dev
- Narrated by: Soneela Nankani
- Length: 10 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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Mira Salvi has the perfect life—a job she loves, a fiancé everyone adores, and the secure future she’s always imagined for herself. Really, she hasn’t a thing to complain about, not even when she has to go on her engagement trip to New York alone. While playing tourist in the city, Mira chances upon a lost ring, and her social media post to locate its owner goes viral. With everyone trying to claim the ring, only one person seems to want to find its owner as badly as Mira does: journalist Krish Hale.
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Powerful
- By HT on 02-09-25
By: Sonali Dev
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If Tomorrow Never Comes
- By: Allison Ashley
- Narrated by: Ann Marie Gideon
- Length: 9 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Uncertain of what tomorrow brings, Elliott Holland decides to live it up—on the eve of a stem cell transplant to treat her leukemia. It’s destiny when she crosses paths with handsome and charming Jamie Sullivan. The chemistry is magic. So is a beautiful evening that ends with a bittersweet kiss goodbye and no expectations of ever seeing each other again.
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Sweet
- By Cassie on 05-01-25
By: Allison Ashley
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Mr. Whisper
- A Thriller (The Specialists, Book 1)
- By: Andrew Mayne
- Narrated by: Jennifer O'Donnell, Susannah Jones, Will Damron, and others
- Length: 12 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Investigator Sloan McPherson finds a frightened vagrant suffering from amnesia living in a Florida swamp—then learns he disappeared from Oregon when he was a teenager. To find out how he ended up three thousand miles from home thirty years later, Sloan enlists the help of two brilliant colleagues. FBI agent Jessica Blackwood and scientist Theo Cray have already made an alarming connection. A female classmate of the Everglades drifter disappeared at the same time, and their high school journals reveal ties to an enigmatic figure they both called Mr. Whisper.
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Wow!!
- By kristene skaggs on 03-12-25
By: Andrew Mayne
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Always You and Me
- By: Dani Atkins
- Narrated by: Elizabeth Knowelden
- Length: 12 hrs
- Unabridged
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On the eve of her wedding to Adam, Lily’s best friend Josh unexpectedly walked out of her life, and she hasn’t seen him since. Lily and Adam are blissfully happy, until he falls ill. As she cares for him in his final hours, Adam asks her to make a mysterious promise: to find Josh—and forgive them both.
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What a beautiful story
- By anna on 05-04-25
By: Dani Atkins
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Some Other Time
- A Novel
- By: Angela Brown
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 10 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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The next step in Ellie Baker’s marriage: divorce. She and her husband, Jonah, are heading to Florida to break it to the family. No great drama to share. After twenty years of marriage, they’ve just fallen out of love. Simple. Not to their college-age daughter, Maggie, who is devastated. Or to Ellie’s father, Frank, who grows as cold as a retiree can get in Orlando. As for Ellie’s mother, Bunny: no, no, no. She doesn’t want to hear it. After a dreadful weekend, Ellie and Jonah return home to New Jersey with hearts and minds still set on a split.
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Almost didn’t finish
- By KW on 04-05-25
By: Angela Brown
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Falling Overboard
- By: Sariah Wilson
- Narrated by: Eric London, Summer Morton
- Length: 11 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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Lucky Salerno’s dream is to own a bakery. To earn enough money to achieve it, she has secured a lucrative job as chief stewardess on a superyacht cruising the Mediterranean. Aboard the ship, there’s one unbreakable rule: no hookups among the crew. No problem. The last thing Lucky has time for is a man. Then she meets Hunter Smith, the gorgeous new deckhand sharing her cabin. Is the universe trying to test her willpower?
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Not like other Syriah Wilson books
- By Heather B. on 04-23-25
By: Sariah Wilson
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Long Time Dead
- Detective Sheridan Holler, Book 1
- By: T. M. Payne
- Narrated by: Heather Bleasdale
- Length: 10 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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DI Sheridan Holler is used to solving crimes on Liverpool’s streets, but after a decayed corpse turns up in a cemetery, she finds herself reopening not one but two cold cases. Seven years earlier, two women were gunned down and the only suspect, small-time drug dealer John Lively, was never seen again. Case closed. Until the body in the cemetery is identified as his.
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Clever and Fun Police Procedural
- By C. Hartmann on 04-05-24
By: T. M. Payne
What listeners say about Not Quite by the Book
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- BK
- 05-01-25
Loved
Beautiful story of finding yourself. Story was told beautifully, believably and at a good steady pace. Makes me want to rent an airbnb!
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- Mynae Atkins
- 03-11-25
Find your HEA
This book was a surprise. I'm not familiar with this author but it's such a great story. Who wouldn't want to take a 6 week sabbatical to find themselves and find true love when you're not looking for it?
The narrative was spot on. Love her voice.
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- erin0415
- 04-09-25
Meh
Main character was kind of annoying, more so the further the book went. Overall, the story was ok
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- MossPeach
- 03-13-25
Blah
Overall, not a terrible book, just a little slow and lacking characters development. I would have liked to see more development on other characters. it would have built the sense of mystery a little bit more.
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- Julie Smith
- 03-16-25
Just okay
Who goes on vacation for six weeks 40 miles away? That’s nuts. Also, the obsessive fascination with ED didn’t really sit well. The story was very slow, characters were very one dimensional. It was just okay.
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- CherylLynnS
- 03-29-25
Need a vacation like this!
I loved everything about this book…….the friendships, both old and new, trying new hobbies, slow burning romance and a loving, if somewhat dysfunctional, family.
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- Bailey Rose
- 03-03-25
Perfection
I am gushing right now! One of the best romantic comedies I have had the pleasure of reading.
Will Emma find her true love? Is it Michael? Or perhaps it is Davis? Emma takes a six week sabbatical to rediscover who she truly is and what she truly wants in the midst of her pregnant sister’s due date approaching and her parents retiring. Not only are they retiring but they’re planning on Emma to take the reins for their beloved bookstore. Plus, she thinks it is time to give up on love.
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- Anna Martinez
- 03-13-25
She was boring at first.
Spoiler Alert:
It was definitely a slow start for me. I knew it was Davis, I stuck around to make sure.
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- Alyssa Lancaster
- 03-22-25
Great Book!
I absolutely loved this book! Being a fan of books, gardening, bunnies, and Emily Dickinson it wasn’t a hard sell but it was even more enjoyable than expected. I’ve loved all the books from this author but I think this is my favorite yet.
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- shelingas_sis
- 03-13-25
Cute story, a little slow
Great performance, but story was a little slow. The story had a bunch of characters that could be stars of their own books in a series.
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